Val's post reminded me -- I am the biggest sucker for the mismatched eyes cliche. Kubo and the Two Strings, Artemis Fowl, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle...... I absolutely cannot get enough of that ****.

I am also down with red protag eyes. But only if they're permanently red. Just an anime ass dude/lady with red ass eyes because anime. None of that ToS2 "ONLY RED WHEN POSSESSED BY THE dEMONIC pOWER,," bull.

Bump. I was going to make a new topic, but I realized I could just fit it into this thread.

It really bugs me when fantasy/sci-fi writers invent names for characters or places or things and then sprinkle them with dashes/apostrophes/diacritics that don't serve any purpose other than to make the word look more exotic. One thing I really appreciated about The Lord of the Rings when I read it was how well this trope was avoided, Tolkien himself being a philologist.

It also bothers me when a supposedly-alien language follows English conventions (feminine names ending with "-a" or "-ia", complete lack of consonant or vowel sounds not used natively in English, etc.).

^I mostly agree with that, but I think the last point is defensible in text. It might not be 100% believable that the aliens have exactly the same phonetics as Earth languages do, but I'd much rather that than be asked to pronounce a%f&b.

^^Sometimes the apostrophes have a purpose. In Klingon, the apostrophe represents a glottal stop. (Man. Klingons are a bunch of friggin dweebos. I liked them when I was a kid, because I was a dweebenheimer, too. Nowadays I'm more for the Romulans. What a bunch of sneaky bastards. I love 'em, man. Underhanded is underrated. Also they paint big dang raptors on their ships-----------like who doesn't love that. Federation don't do nose art. Lame.)

I like the cliches they recycle and repackage in DBZ and DBS. I like how Goku just gets an asspull powerup or transformation and can stand up against the enemy. The latest one, Ultra Instinct, isn't perfect but they sure did a good job of giving it an epic introduction.

Every time I think of a cliche I run to this thread only to forget what it was before I can post it.

OH.

Now I remember.

It occurred to me during the movie Black Panther.

I'm getting really tired seeing the protagonist going to a group of supporting characters all like "help me fight the villain" and they're like "Sorry, no" but then during the final battle at a crucial life-or-death moment - SURPRISE! The supporting characters DO CARE AFTER ALL!

Angsty relationships between short-lived humans and **** thousand-year-old magic beings in fantasy are a good ass cliche. The whole "as long as you're alive to remember me" and crap, I live for that. And the "I've been alive for so many centuries your lifespan is a blink of an eye to me." I don't care if every single fantasy piece with elves in it ever has already done the elves-being-angsty-about-outliving-their-human-friends thing; they should KEEP doing it because it's good.

The ponies show. Like, I'm kind of happy for Twilight, now that she's a quasi-immortal demigoddess and all. But wowie zowie, I sure don't want to see her weeping over Applejack's grave, or Rainbow Dash's, or Rarity's. Or Apple Bloom's. Gods below, what an absolute bummer that'd be.

Oh, of course Hasbro would never put out a 'Pinkie Pie's Funeral' playset, complete with balloon-adorned pink coffin. And yet it's in the headspace, and not just because of the fanfics and RDP. Pinkie must die someday, right. And if Twilight is an immortal, she must be there. It simply has to be. It's kind of tragic. (lol friendship is tragic)

One wonders if Hasbro thought at all about anything at all before they stuck wings and a crown on Twily. Betcha they didn't much.